Turns out that modern drives can stretch the tape to make tracks line up right. It makes sense that as density grows, the real world effects of things like temperature and humidity require more and more work to compensate for.
marklar423 · 1h ago
My company moved EiBs of data off of tape a few years ago. It was reliable and durable, but the problem was read speed.
It took so long to move tapes around and read the sequentially (no random access!), and as the data corpus grew it got harder to have a practical backup, even though the data was still theoretically extant.
johnklos · 3h ago
Most of the people who parrot the "tape is dead" stuff haven't used tape.
When it comes to the reliability of putting something on a shelf, then pulling it off twenty years later, tape still is better than everything else.
amelius · 3h ago
Yes, definitely true. And maybe they are even more relevant now because of all the data needed for deep learning.
However, the drives are expensive. This industry is in dire need of disruption.
bombcar · 2h ago
$5k for a LTO9 drive isn’t terribly bad; once you have any significant number of tapes.
Expensive for home use, but they can buy older technology off-lease.
buran77 · 1h ago
> Expensive for home use, but they can buy older technology
I can't imagine home users being interested in buying mostly used SCSI or SAS tape drives while navigating a world of format compatibility challenges and problems with improper storage. Environmental requirements for archival are narrow and most homes don't tick that box over many years or when moving.
This medium is expensive, inconvenient to use and store, and in the world of home use those are killers. You don't need to take my word for it, look around at tape home use.
Home users are better served by cloud storage or an external hard drive, maybe a home NAS, especially for the relatively low data volumes home usage usually involves.
rowanG077 · 2h ago
Yep since IBM has the monopoly they have been squeezing everyone to the maximum degree. Too bad HP stopped their tape drive development. They kept IBM under control.
Turns out that modern drives can stretch the tape to make tracks line up right. It makes sense that as density grows, the real world effects of things like temperature and humidity require more and more work to compensate for.
It took so long to move tapes around and read the sequentially (no random access!), and as the data corpus grew it got harder to have a practical backup, even though the data was still theoretically extant.
When it comes to the reliability of putting something on a shelf, then pulling it off twenty years later, tape still is better than everything else.
However, the drives are expensive. This industry is in dire need of disruption.
Expensive for home use, but they can buy older technology off-lease.
I can't imagine home users being interested in buying mostly used SCSI or SAS tape drives while navigating a world of format compatibility challenges and problems with improper storage. Environmental requirements for archival are narrow and most homes don't tick that box over many years or when moving.
This medium is expensive, inconvenient to use and store, and in the world of home use those are killers. You don't need to take my word for it, look around at tape home use.
Home users are better served by cloud storage or an external hard drive, maybe a home NAS, especially for the relatively low data volumes home usage usually involves.